Episode 7 Fugitives

-Come on!

-On the run...

-Get back here !

..and over here.

Hands out now. Hands out.

When foreign criminals flee their home countries,

many hide out in the UK.

Give me your hands.

But if they think they're safe, they're wrong.

They know they're wanted.

A lot of these people are waiting for that knock on the door.

But the traffic in fugitives isn't all one way.

Across Europe, there are hundreds of British criminals

also trying to escape justice.

From the sun-drenched Costas

to the busy streets of the Dutch capital...

..this is how the police take down the fugitives...

You're under arrest under the Extradition Act.

Police officer.

..both at home and abroad.

On today's programme - on the run for seven years.

How the man who made a dramatic escape

from a British courtroom was found by fugitive hunters in Spain.

They told me he was a crazy man, so if you find him,

just be really careful with this guy.

In Coventry...

KNOCKING

..it's time for this murderer to pack up and leave.

Being dealt with for a murder in Poland

and that's why we've been notified that the Home Office

no longer wish him to be in the UK.

In London, Detective Sergeant Pete Rance and his team from the Extradition Unit are out

trying to catch foreign ciminals wanted in other European countries.

Hello. It's the police. Can you open the door, please?

The nation that sends out the highest number of arrest warrants is Poland.

If I was to hazard a guess

and look at the work that comes across my desk

on a week-to-week basis,

I would probably say 60-70% of the cases

that I receive are Polish European Arrest Warrants.

And that's exactly what Pete and his team are doing this morning.

The fella we're looking for is a fella called Przemyslaw Ratajczyk

who is wanted in Poland for fraud offences.

Everything... All the checks we've done

indicate that he could well be at this address.

He has got another family member living with him there.

Ratajczyk has been convicted for producing and selling

counterfeit CDs and DVDs and given a ten-month prison sentence.

The investigation has led Pete and his team to this apartment block

and they're about to find out if the intelligence is on the money.

Big dog.

BARKING

Not my favourite thing!

Hello, sir, sorry to trouble you. My name is Pete Rance,

I'm a detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police.

-Say again?

-My name's Peter Rance,

I'm a detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police.

Is it possible to come and speak to you?

It is still only quarter to six in the morning

and with the man's brother looking on, Pete makes his enquiries.

Is this you?

-Probably, yes.

-It is you, OK.

Mr Ratajczyk, Poland has issued a European Arrest Warrant

for your arrest. You are wanted for fraud offences in Poland.

OK? Because of that...

..you are under arrest on the European Arrest Warrant.

You do not have to say anything,

but anything you do say may be given in evidence, OK?

You can be charged with an offence of fraud over there.

-OK? Do you understand?

-Yes, yes.

Sorry, there are no lights, it's dark.

When you get in, you just need to put your seatbelt on, all right?

It's a relatively low-level fraud offence this guy is wanted for,

but he has got ten months in prison to serve

if his extradition is ordered.

So the proceedings will start today and he will find out shortly

whether he is to be extradited or whether there is a case for him

to remain in the UK.

Extradition cases like this can take many months

to go through the courts.

But Pete's job is to simply find the person named on the warrant,

no matter what they're wanted for.

Certain countries will issue requests

for relatively minor offences,

other countries will only issue them for serious offences.

But as an extradition unit, we work on a sort of bilateral basis

and if they've seen fit to issue the warrant,

we have a duty and an obligation to execute it

if we can locate and identify them.

With the work of the extradition unit done,

it remains for the judge to decide if Ratajczyk is to be sent back home

to Poland to serve his sentence.

This is Andrew Moran, a dangerous armed robber.

After a dramatic escape from his own trial,

he thought he could stay on the run forever.

But seven years of determined policing at home and abroad

led to a dramatic arrest,

a lesson for all fugitives.

People run, but increasingly with the use of modern technologies,

there really isn't anywhere to hide any more, and we will get you.

We'll find you. We'll bring you back.

There is no hiding place.

It all started on a May morning in 2005

at an Asda store in Colne, Lancashire.

Two men arrived in the car park on a motorbike

and staged a violent robbery.

Their target was this Royal Mail cash delivery van.

They were armed with machetes, using them to attack one of the guards,

injuring his arms and shoulders.

They also threatened him with a gun.

During the attack, he thought he was going to die.

That he was either going to be shot or that the blows with the machete

were going to kill him. The robbers threatened to kill him

while they were demanding money from the back of the van

and in order to get his colleague

to pass the cash out, one told the other one just to shoot him.

Fearing for his life, the guard handed over £25,000.

The men sped away on their bike, but it was soon abandoned.

We had a starting point then with the motorbike that had been found.

DNA evidence on the bike led them to a known criminal whose phone records

then revealed that the second robber was someone nicknamed Faggy,

but detectives needed to know his real name.

Nobody knew who Faggy was,

which seemed really unusual from my point of view.

If it's somebody that's attacking Royal Mail vans

with guns and machetes, you would think it would be somebody

that's come across the radar of the police somewhere

and that somebody would know this person called Faggy.

But at least they had his phone number

and for 18 months, detectives monitored his calls.

They began to suspect that the man behind the nickname

was convicted criminal Andrew Moran.

One frequently dialled number gave him away.

We found a girl in the Manchester area

that the phone rang all the time.

She admitted that she was Andrew Moran's girlfriend.

Andrew Moran was already well known to police elsewhere in the country.

He'd been on the run for a number of years from Manchester,

so our robbery that we wanted him for

was added to the list of the other offences

that he was already being sought for.

The search went quiet until one day police happened to stop Moran

on a Manchester street.

He was carrying false details, but the officers were having none of it.

Once they tried to arrest him, he punched the officer in the face,

ran away, but luckily they managed to chase after him, caught him.

It was news the Lancashire team had been waiting for.

To find out that he'd finally been arrested

was really, really exciting.

It was sort of like feeling that you're coming towards

the end of the, erm...

To a successful conclusion for the investigation.

But the officers' high hopes would soon be dashed.

Seven weeks into his trial,

the armed robber made a dramatic bid for freedom.

It had taken police four years to get into court.

How long would it take to track him down again?

Every November, British police team up with the European forces

to run a special operation targeting foreign offenders

using the UK's transport links.

What's great is the information and intelligence sharing.

So if we stop a foreign driver in the UK today,

we've got the whole range of countries that we can check their

intelligence databases.

The UK's central hub is in Birmingham where police,

immigration and tax officers deal with queries.

It might be something just as simple

as are we able to get an image of the person

so that that can be compared with the person that the officer

stopped at the roadside.

Or it might be that we need to know if they have any foreign convictions

that obviously we can't just check with our systems in the UK.

It's also about catching foreign criminals

on the move around the country.

Yeah, it is a live warrant.

He is wanted for currency fraud in Czechoslovakia,

so you can go ahead and arrest him.

Away from the control centre,

Sergeant Adam Jobson is one of the operations officers on the ground,

tracking down men and women wanted by European police forces.

You've seen someone go in, have you?

Recently, it's been tough going

and he's been unable to track down some of his targets.

It sounds like he has spoken to you since you've been at this address.

Now he's in Coventry and his latest job is to help local police

catch a man who has a dangerous criminal past -

Slawomir Mielczarek.

He's been dealt with for a murder in Poland whereby a drunken night out

he's been one of three people who got into a fight

and they've ended up killing someone.

Mielczarek served his time for the killing in Poland,

but since coming over to the UK,

he's been in trouble with the police again on a drugs charge.

That's why we've done the checks with his own country

and that's why we've been notified that the Home Office

no longer wish him to be in the UK.

Approaching from front and back,

Adam and the other officers moved in on Mielczarek's last known address.

Hello, it's the police.

It's a lady at the door.

Someone else.

Hello, do you mind if we come in?

-What?

-We're just looking for somebody. A gentleman.

Mind if we come in? Is that OK?

OK, does this gentleman live here?

I think it was his wife who answered the door to us.

I think she was shocked to see the police.

They may not have known it was coming,

but I think reality soon sets in.

Hello.

Is he here? The man?

We're inside now, I believe he is going to be here.

Mielczarek is in and it looks like he's trapped upstairs.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

Not yet, mate, if you just hang fire round there

just in case he goes out the window or anything.

Do you speak English?

No, just Polish.

OK, Polish. We'll get you an interpreter.

At the moment, you're under arrest.

They have sent multiple officers as Mielczarek has a history of violence

and has been caught by surprise.

I'm going to handcuff him.

I don't want him walking down the stairs

uncuffed in case he tries to make a bolt out of the door.

Do you understand a little English?

You are coming to the police station.

You're all right. We're going to come down now.

It's when the cuffs go on

that the family realise the severity of the situation.

-WOMAN:

-No!

I don't want you to come downstairs.

Wait there one second.

We are going to put some shoes and socks on now.

Just come down the stairs.

Yes, can you confirm the block is still in order to bring out the IPC?

As we were leaving the address,

family members were very upset because I think, as I say,

the reality has set in,

that there was a chance that this person would be deported.

We'll explain at the station, OK?

Sometimes you feel bad. It's never nice to break up families.

But ultimately, this person was convicted for murder.

To me that person is dangerous and I have no problem separating people

like that who aren't fit to be in our public in the UK.

Mielczarek is taken to Coventry police station

so that police can double-check his identity.

Once they've confirmed that this is the man

who's already served six years in prison for murder,

then his deportation back to Poland can go ahead.

In March 2009,

after four years on the run, armed robber Andrew Moran was on trial

at Burnley Crown Court.

Back in 2005,

he and another man had attempted to rob a cash delivery van

in a supermarket car park.

It was a real painstaking trial.

It lasted for seven weeks.

Andrew Moran did give evidence in his own trial.

He came across as being very arrogant.

He argued with the prosecution barrister,

kept calling him "mate" and it was very difficult for the barrister

to cross-examine because of his attitude towards him.

He did come across, as I say, very arrogant and cocky.

But as the jury prepared to return their verdict,

Moran leapt from the dock and escaped from court.

Andrew Moran assaulted the Group4 guard,

jumped over the dock barrier and ran from the court,

pursued by staff and police officers

and Group4 security guards from the court, but managed to evade capture.

Moran disappeared.

After four months of searching and with no sightings in the UK,

it was time for the National Crime Agency to get involved.

It has agents who specialise in tracking fugitives down

wherever they are in the world.

When they go abroad and they go underground,

the only place that they can go to is amongst other crime groups

and therefore often their criminality

will start to rise and they will start

to get into more high-profile types of activity.

By the autumn of 2012,

the UK's National Crime Agency

had discovered that Moran's girlfriend was making regular trips

to a remote village called Los Alcazares

in the Murcia region of Spain.

It was down to Olga Lizana,

head of the Spanish police's fugitive unit, to track him down.

I found the house but I didn't see him at that point

but I saw his girlfriend.

So we knew they were always together

so we knew he was there.

Moran's hideout had been discovered at last.

Armed officers prepared to capture him just as soon as he emerged

from his rented villa.

Moran left the house driving a car,

but we were not sure it was him.

So we decided, OK, let's follow for a while.

Their chance came when Moran stopped the car.

But he was determined not to be captured.

So I crossed my car, trying to avoid him to escape.

But there was a place close to there with one entrance and one exit.

He drove into that place

and we just tried to block the exit and the entrance.

He hit the police cars, he escaped,

and he just took the highway.

After crashing into a police car,

Moran sped away down the motorway running along the Spanish coastline.

We were calling the police officer and also the tolls to tell them

we're just following this car.

We told them the plate and tried to stop the car

but after 15km he just decided to leave the highway.

At that time, Moran stopped the car, so we were just behind him.

He didn't know what he was thinking or he was trying to do

so I told my colleague, "If he opens the door, shoot him,"

because we were sure Moran got a gun.

Moran stayed in his car and, in a moment of madness,

drove off down the wrong side of a dual carriageway.

He just turned around, took the highway on the wrong way,

and at that point I was following him

but we realised he was a real danger for all the people driving.

It's a busy highway, most cars are driving really fast,

so it's like I made the decision,

OK, let him go, we'll find him again.

Moran had made his escape once more.

The villa he'd abandoned was searched.

The fugitive had left plenty of incriminating evidence behind.

We found some drugs, we found a gun in the kitchen,

we found a few passports, because we knew he had, in the past,

he had been using Irish passport,

but that time we know he was using a false Lithuanian passport,

so he was just going out to buy something,

so he left all the stuff over there.

I think clearly everyone who was involved on that day

was disappointed with the outcome.

You know, we had a location where he was at and he unfortunately

managed to escape arrest.

I'm sure the Spanish police would be equally as disappointed as we were,

so, yeah, it was a bit disappointing

for the team that were involved in tracking him down,

but actually it just increased our determination to catch him.

Moran had again disappeared without trace.

It would take another six months for Spanish and British police to find

his new hideout, another luxury villa on the Costa Blanca.

This time, there would be no escape.

In Coventry, officers are out tracking down criminal offenders

who have fled to the UK from overseas.

Earlier in the evening, Sergeant Adam Jobson and his team managed to

locate a man wanted for breaching a deportation order.

Wait there one second.

Slawomir Mielczarek has already served six years

in a Polish prison for murder.

Now, the Home Office wants him out of the UK.

INDISTINCT

When they are booking in foreign national offenders,

custody staff have access to interpreters

at the end of a phone line.

INTERPRETER SPEAKS OVER PHONE

It's not been long since Mielczarek was last in custody,

when he was found in possession of ecstasy, and arrested.

It was this that alerted the Home Office to his presence

in the country and his criminal history

and led to their decision to deport him.

-OK.

-Kev, can we see how tall he is, please?

-Yeah.

He's already come across the police,

and nothing's obviously been mentioned,

so he probably hasn't even had a second thought about it,

to be honest, and it's not until we've turned up today and explained

what's going to happen,

that's when I think the reality sets in, that he'll be going now,

and his family are obviously still in the UK at the moment.

OK, thank you. OK.

Can you please tell the gentleman

he's now going to be searched by one of my colleagues,

and, once he's been searched, the handcuffs will be removed?

Stand here, sir.

Can you tell this gentleman because he's got previous for drugs misuse,

I'm going to authorise a strip search under Section 54 of PACE?

For Adam, Mielczarek's arrest

marks the end of a difficult period where he and fellow officers

have narrowly missed out

on catching some of the other fugitives they're after.

When we made that arrest,

it was almost like a weight's lifted off your shoulders, really,

and you're going from one address to the next to the next,

and often it's demoralising,

sometimes, when you're just not getting anywhere,

so to actually find someone in,

especially for such a serious offence,

I think that was the most serious one we had that week,

for a murder offence,

it was certainly very rewarding to get them

and put them in custody to be dealt with properly.

By May 2013, Andrew Moran had been on the run for eight years.

In November the previous year,

he'd escaped capture by Spanish police

by driving the wrong way down a dual carriageway.

In the villa he abandoned,

he left behind more evidence of his criminal lifestyle.

We found a gun in the kitchen.

We also found a machete behind his pillow, so...

And the way he did things, you know, OK, this is a crazy man,

he doesn't care about anything, just about himself,

because you don't do those kinds of things.

We checked the computers,

so we realised he was having a really nice life here in Spain.

From the photographs that we recovered

from his laptop and his iPad,

it did show him travelling

extensively, access to high-powered vehicles,

lavish lifestyle, and clearly he was living a very opulent life.

The photos on his laptop also revealed that Moran

was adept at changing his appearance.

Some pictures he has very long hair, very blond hair,

in others, just very short hair.

Sometimes he was wearing glasses or...

So it was not that easy

to realise who he was.

But police and the National Crime Agency

were determined this latest escape would be short-lived.

He was now going to have to perhaps move him into an area that would

make him even more vulnerable.

He was no longer perhaps in

and amongst a seat of criminals over there in Spain.

He was now going to have to perhaps go it alone.

Olga and her team spent months

searching amongst the expat community.

It's like a personal thing.

He tried to kill me.

He didn't care about the Spanish police over there,

and let's go find him again.

But with thousands of Brits thronging this coastline,

tracking down Moran for a second time wasn't going to be easy.

Spanish police suspected he'd headed for Benidorm.

We moved some people from my team over there,

just trying to check all the bars in Benidorm

It was May, so it was nice weather here.

All the bars over there, British bars and things like that,

but we didn't get much information.

Then came the tip-off they needed.

A friend of Moran's owned a villa in Calpe,

half an hour north of Benidorm,

and it seemed he had a new tenant.

We just came here to take a look and he was outside,

so from here we just took some pictures,

and then we realised it was Moran,

and after that is when we decided, OK, let's make the arrest in here.

Olga had tracked Moran down once again.

Not wanting to take any more chances with this dangerous and potentially

armed criminal, she called in a crack Spanish Swat team.

The special team normally go at night

but I told them a little bit of how dangerous this guy was, it's like...

And the house got two floors.

We knew the bedrooms were upstairs,

so I told them if you get there at night, you have to go upstairs.

I'm sure this guy got guns again.

I found a machete, so probably he will get a new one.

And then we decided, OK, I can see him, he's by the swimming pool,

he is wearing shorts, so I'm sure he has nothing on him.

So let's go to do it now.

As Moran relaxed by the pool with his girlfriend,

the team caught him by surprise.

As soon as he realised we were police officers, he tried to escape,

so he tried to jump to the other house,

but the police officer got them and they took him back to the house,

and he was arrested close to the swimming pool.

We found a lot of mobile phones in the kitchen,

and then upstairs we found a new machete, under the pillow.

That's the information... I mean, that's what we expected.

And this time, the guns were not in the house.

They were outside, but belonging to the same property.

Back in Lancashire,

officers were relieved that the man who'd escaped justice in 2009

was finally in custody in Spain.

After all that hard work that we'd done

to get through the long trial proceedings,

to find him now two or three times when he's been wanted and escaped,

to know that he was finally there, arrested, behind bars in Spain,

safe, and was coming back at some stage to the UK

was a really sort of...

real feeling of job satisfaction, of a job well done.

I think when he escaped the first time, he thought I was stupid,

or the police officers, or the Spanish police officers were stupid.

But right now I think he was not that smart...

..because we found him again.

So...right now, you have to see, I'm here.

He's still in jail in Spain

and he's going back to the UK,

and he has to spend a long, long time over there,

so who's the smart guy?

Following his capture,

Moran was tried in Spain for drug and traffic offences.

After three years in a Spanish jail, he was returned to the UK,

and, in April 2016,

he was sentenced to a minimum of eight years in prison.

Slawomir Mielczarek, the man who'd already served six years

in a Polish prison for murder,

was deported back to his homeland in March 2016.

And in May the same year,

Metropolitan Police put Przemyslaw Ratajczyk

on a military flight back to Poland to serve his sentence

for producing and selling counterfeit CDs and DVDs.